Blood Water

CHAPTER 25

They had only been gone for ten seconds when Sean felt an overwhelming urge to call out to them. So the man was tied up… So what? The creature inside him was capable of all sorts of things. Sean looked at the tied wrists and feet. Waites seemed to have done a good job, but it might not be good enough to keep the man restrained when he woke up.

A sound that came from out in the corridor interrupted Sean’s thoughts. It was an odd scratching or gnawing, and it seemed to be getting closer. He tried to ignore it, but it continued – until finally he had to go and have a look.

He poked his head out of the office doorway; then, when he was confident enough that there was nothing in the immediate vicinity, he stepped out and peered down the long corridor that led past the laboratories and the lecture hall. There was nothing there. The sound had stopped too, so he couldn’t tell where it had come from; though as he turned back he heard a new sound, this time a whining – maybe from some lonely or frightened animal in the first laboratory. He knew he shouldn’t go any further, that he shouldn’t have even left the office, but it sounded like something was in pain, and his instinct was to try and help it.

James led the way up the stairs to the first floor. He had only been up here on a few occasions: it contained sleeping quarters, storage rooms and little else of interest. But he had once gone to Morrow’s room to leave him a note about something. He suddenly remembered the doctor was dead; it had completely slipped his mind, and he felt guilty: Dr Morrow had been a friendly, helpful and interesting man, someone James had learned a lot from. He would miss him.

He found the room and opened the door. The bed was made; money, receipts, books and mugs were assembled on top of the chest of drawers. A solitary sock lay on the floor near the bed, and a tiny red light indicated that the TV was still plugged in. A lot of mundane stuff, but considering the owner of the room had been alive until a few hours ago, it all made James feel sad and angry. He walked over to a pile of magazines and notebooks lying on a chair and dumped them on the bed. He and Waites sifted through them, checking each notebook for anything recent. All the notes were old, however.

‘Doesn’t look like there’s anything here,’ Waites said.

James dropped the two books he was holding onto the bed and went over to the bedside cabinet. In the top drawer was another notebook, but this one looked new, hardly used. ‘Maybe there is…’ he said.

‘Got something?’ Waites asked as James flicked to the last few pages of the book.

‘I think so.’ He read out the last few lines of the last page. ‘I am going to wait until tomorrow, then venture outside. I must get away, I must warn everyone about this thing before it is too late…’

The laboratory was cold and a window had been left open so rain and leaves had got in and covered much of the floor and furniture. Nature was invading the building. Sean looked for a light switch and turned all the lights on. The room reminded him of the science labs at school. He couldn’t hear the strange sound any more, but he stood still anyway, and waited. Sure enough, after a minute or so he heard something moving at the far end of the room. He went over, stooping to look under the benches in case there was something hiding there. He was almost at the far wall when he saw it. Hunched up in a wet, bedraggled ball was a small dog. It was looking at Sean, its eyes wary, uncertain. Sean approached it slowly now, not wanting to scare it off.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Who are you then?’

The dog’s ears pricked up, but it stayed where it was. Sean knelt down and reached a hand forward very carefully towards its head. The dog shrank back a little at first, then moved forward again, sniffing Sean’s fingers, then licking them. Sean stroked it, but its fur was wet and smelly. All of a sudden it turned its head as though it had heard something.

‘What is it?’ Sean asked the animal. ‘Did you—?’ Then he remembered his responsibility and where he should be and cursed himself for being distracted. ‘Come on. Come with me,’ he said, then got to his feet and ran back towards the office. He didn’t look back to see if the dog was following, but it was. Outside the door he stopped, then went forward more slowly, ready to turn and run at the slightest hint that something was wrong. He inched forward, step by step, wondering if Titus had regained consciousness.

The answer to this, as the rest of the room was revealed, was a clear ‘yes’. The second, more urgent question, however, was: where the hell had he gone?

James read the previous two pages of Morrow’s diary entries, while Waites stood beside him and did the same. Things had clearly gone seriously wrong at the study centre. The creature had been allowed to progress from a state of harmless dormancy to one where it could manipulate a human being into performing acts of violence; and all the people in the study centre had been murdered by its first host, Holland.

‘Are they going to believe this?’ James asked. ‘The police, I mean.’

‘I don’t know,’ Waites said, shaking his head. ‘I’m still not entirely sure I do. This should help though. This and any more notes we can find on Morrow’s experiments will help explain things. It still doesn’t give us anything we can use to stop this creature though. Why did he try and point us towards Sally Cooper when he died? What was he trying to tell us?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘This guy he mentions in his diary, Holland. Did you know him?’

‘Not very well. I saw him a few times around the centre. Bit of an oddball really. Kept himself to himself most of the time. Morrow never got on well with him.’

‘Obviously not. Perhaps he knew something about the creature. Where’s his room? We should go and see if he kept a diary or made notes.’

‘It’s just down the hall. Shouldn’t we go and check on Sean though? I don’t like leaving him on his own with that thing.’

‘All right, you go to Holland’s room and grab what you can. I’ll make sure Sean’s OK.’

While Waites headed back to the stairs, James hurried down the corridor. Even before he got to Holland’s room he could smell it. It was a pungent composite smell of various elements. Some he couldn’t quite make out, but the strongest one was familiar. Blood.

The dog padded into the office, sniffing around and wagging its tail. It circled twice, then sat down and looked at Sean. Sean himself was trying to work out what to do. He went to look around the small foyer between the offices, listening for movement, his heart pounding. Titus could have gone anywhere. The dog started sniffing the damp floor where Titus had been lying, and the discarded cord from the blind. After a second or two it gave a sharp bark, then turned and left the room.

Sean knew he should probably go to look for Waites and his brother, but the headmaster had been his responsibility, and he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he allowed the creature to get away. He headed off after the dog, hoping that Titus had simply collapsed somewhere else, and that he would be able to drag the body back to the office before the others got back from their search.

James pushed the door open slowly; the horrible smell was even stronger now, making his stomach turn. As far as he knew, Holland was the first person to be infected by the creature; Sean had supposedly witnessed his death on the riverbank. If that was true, then the bodies in Holland’s room must have been murdered while the creature had been in control of his mind. He paused for a moment, swallowing, then reminded himself that he had an important job to do: this was no time for wimping out.

Important job or not, it was impossible not to be stunned and horrified by the carnage. James guessed that there were the bodies of three people in there, though the number of limbs and lumps of flesh could easily lead one to think there had been more. The carpet was soaked with blood and other matter, and although at first he couldn’t work out what had caused the devastation, the long, chewing saw marks in the cupboard suggested a chainsaw. He hoped it was now well away from the wrong hands.

The urge to vomit was powerful but not as strong as James had expected; what he’d already seen had clearly desensitized him to such horror. He approached the desk, which had been damaged by the saw, and noticed the computer monitor. He moved the mouse, flinching as his fingers smeared a drop of blood, and was surprised to see the screen blink into life. The computer had obviously been left on, and as James scoured the desktop icons he noticed one labelled journal. He double-clicked on it and a word-processing application loaded up. He scrolled down to the last few pages of the document but there were so many mad ramblings and random symbols that he had to scroll back up to find a paragraph that made sense. And what he saw almost made his heart stop.

‘Oh my God… no…’ He re-read the passage, hoping that he’d misunderstood it, but no such luck. It was too much of a coincidence; it had to be real. In which case they were in far more trouble than they realized. He thought for a second or two, then set about deleting the file. It wasn’t enough though: he took out his penknife, unscrewed the computer case, removed the hard drive and the screws holding it together, then cut the thin magnetic disks inside to shreds.

When he was satisfied, he tossed the pieces onto the floor and left the room. Thunder was once again reverberating outside and the rain resumed its merciless attack. This is the end of the world, James thought. Who would have believed that it would start here?